Carree Alte Post
| Carrée Alte Post | |
|---|---|
 The historic post office seen from the southwest. |
|
| Data | |
| place | Berlin |
| Construction year | 1925-1927 |
| height | 20 m |
| Floor space | 1300 m² (Alte Post); 5850 m² |
| Coordinates | 52 ° 30'51.2 " N , 13 ° 29'0" E |
The former post office Lichtenberg 1 forms the core of the new residential complex Carrée Alte Post in Dottistraße in the Berlin-Lichtenberg district . It was the first central post office in Lichtenberg after the place had opened up in the greater Berlin community . The four-storey clinker facing building was built between 1925 and 1927. The expressionistically designed building has been a listed building since the late 1970s . In 2013 a real estate company acquired the former post office and two neighboring properties . After the renovation and interior modernization of the building, condominiums will be furnished. New buildings to the east and north of the historic post office building complete everything that makes up the “Carrée Alte Post” ensemble.
history
First post office in Berlin-Lichtenberg
The Berlin Reich Postal Administration had acquired the property and had a new post office built here. The areas Dottistraße 1–10, which were shown as simple "construction sites" in the Berlin address book until 1925/1926, were divided into numbers 1–6: construction sites, number 7: mineral water factory K. Glatzig (owner), number 11: shoe manufacturer Josef Freusel ( Owner) and numbers 12–16: Reichspostverwaltung (also owner). From 1925, a four-story functional building was built here as a post office, based on a design by Pottisch. In 1927 the post office for the Deutsche Reichspost (DRP) was ready for occupancy. The master bricklayer Adolph Mattheus from Charlottenburg ("Büro für Bauausführung"), who had already built a number of residential and commercial buildings in Berlin, played a key role in the construction. The post office took up a large part of the northeast side of the street between Rathausstrasse and Ruschestrasse.
Conversions and extensions for extended use
The first conversion took place shortly after 1930, because the task of a telephone operator with a telegraph construction department was added. There was also a connection to the Berlin pneumatic tube network . Further buildings including a small vehicle hall were built on the courtyard side. In the address books between 1930 and 1943, four residents of the post office are named, including the post director (later post office manager ) and the telegraph foreman . From this it can only be concluded that official apartments were set up here. The accommodation of official apartments in official buildings was still common at that time, whereby the general housing shortage also played a role.
On the occasion of the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin , one of the 27 public television rooms in Berlin was built in the post office in Dottistraße .
On the neighboring property at Dottistraße 11, at the corner of Ruschestraße, which housed a shoe factory from 1927–1931, the A. Illgen waffle and jam factory from 1935 is listed. In the following years, the address books also assigned the property on Dottistraße 10 to this factory. Photos taken after the Second World War show a three-story building (in the shape and size of a villa ) directly on the northeast corner of the post office and four-story, plastered buildings set back from the street, which are probably the associated production buildings.
In 1940, a residential building on the opposite side of the street (Dottistraße 7) that was built around 1929 and owned by a private citizen in Charlottenburg was demolished. The area then served the telegraph construction department of the Deutsche Reichspost as a storage area. The post office remained the post and long-distance office until 1943.
The post office after World War II
After the end of the Second World War , the Soviet occupying power confiscated the house and its telephony . A transverse building was erected in the middle of the post office as an amplifier office. The post office building was then bricked up vertically on all floors in the middle. The resulting completely separated east wing with the technology contained therein was used by the Soviet power for their intelligence work, including connections between the command stationed in Wünsdorf , the army administration in Berlin-Karlshorst , the Soviet embassy in Unter den Linden and the Soviet government in the Kremlin in Moscow . A further motor vehicle hall on the courtyard side was used to accommodate an emergency generator and as a material store .
The sketch for the new buildings and conversions was submitted to the Berlin magistrate and checked by the building authorities in 1949. The other telegraphic facilities in the west wing, including the new amplifier office, could continue to be used by the German authorities. In the 1950s, conversions were made again, which were probably necessary due to the discontinuation of the Soviet telegraph headquarters. However, there is no precise information about the work carried out or when the withdrawal took place.
The telephone technology, always expanded and up to date, could finally no longer be accommodated in the traditional buildings. In addition, the task of voice transmission for radio and soon also for television was added. At the beginning of the 1960s, on the opposite side of the street - between Dottistraße and Frankfurter Allee - a new complex was built for the Fernamt Berlin (East) using the storage area from the 1940s. The post office was given up, also because the new Lichtenberg Central Post Office had opened on the corner of Buchberger Strasse. In addition to the technical equipment (transmission technology of the amplifier office on the ground floor), some administrative equipment of the remote office such as the management department remained in the historical building. The Ministry for State Security later maintained a “conspiratorial apartment” in the historic building , in which long-distance telecommunications connections were tapped and transferred to the MfS monitoring center in nearby Gotlindestraße 93.
The vacant monument became interesting for investors in the 21st century, from whom "Dolphin Capital 34. Projekt GmbH & Co. KG" contacted the district monument office and received broad approval for the expansion as a residential property. So in 2013 a purchase agreement was finally concluded.
architecture
The building, divided into twenty-three axles, has dormer windows and is equipped with a gable roof completed. The facade is interrupted by a central portal and two arched passages. In the passages there are stairs on both sides to the interior. Up until the 1970s there was direct access to these staircases from the courtyard side, which have since been bricked up. A stone - cornice in whole width of the building sets the ground floor on the floors above. On the street side, the windows are combined into ribbons by decorative fields developed from the clinker bricks. On the courtyard side, only the staircases are framed by clinker bricks and thus emphasized vertically. The rest of the facade has been cleaned off. Construction experts attribute the architectural style to conservative expressionism. The interior design was carried out in a similar way: columns with partly glazed clinker bricks and angular wall elements adorned the centrally located counter hall. Four steps from street level and a three-part step portal led to it . In the 21st century, only a few original details of the building interior are still preserved, for example the banisters and the angular door frames. They are being restored. The now empty white plaster tape on the street-side facade above the second floor was emblazoned with the inscription Deutsche Reichspost and directly above the main entrance a bronze plastic imperial eagle was attached.
The dimensions given in the info box are only intended as a rough guide. They are based on estimates in Google earth. The height to the roof ridge is estimated from the number of floors and the room heights of an average of three meters and ceiling thicknesses of 50 centimeters; the second number next to the floor area indicates the total area of the new residential area.
In March 2014, the villa was removed and the building on the right had already been demolished down to the ground floor.
Use as living space
The team of architects archis Architekten + Ingenieure GmbH from Karlsruhe developed the Carrée Alte Post project with a new use of the monument. In the building 48 individually designed condominiums were designed with an open kitchen / living area and spacious bathrooms inside. The interior work was originally supposed to be completed in spring 2015, and numerous apartments are now inhabited.
The outbuildings on the courtyard side and the buildings on the neighboring property (former numbers 10 and 11), which the investor had also acquired, were demolished. They are being replaced by architecturally adapted new residential buildings with a total of 91 condominiums, which stretch along Ruschestrasse and Bleckmannweg and were originally supposed to be ready in 2015. On the city map, all buildings form a U-shaped floor plan open to the west . The new buildings are grouped around a generously sized and green inner courtyard.
After construction delays, including the demolition of the neighboring building on Ruschestrasse, several changes of general contractor, and obvious incompetence among the property developer, the first handover of apartments took place in autumn 2019 with several years of construction delay. Final completion is not expected until 2020. The monument has had house numbers 14, 15 and 16 since construction began, the new buildings are located at Bleckmannweg 5–9 and Ruschestraße 6–7.
literature
- Institute for Monument Preservation (Ed.): The architectural and art monuments of the GDR. Capital Berlin-II . Henschelverlag, Berlin 1984, p. 173 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dottistraße . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1927, Part 4, Lichtenberg, p. 1979.
- ↑ Pottisch is named in the monument database as the "architect / artist" for the building. In the Berlin address books from 1920 to 1943, however, there is no resident with such a surname.
- ↑ Mattheus, Adolph . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1927, part 1, p. 2172. Mattheus is named in the Berlin monument database for the construction work.
- ↑ Dottistraße . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1935, part 4, p. 2057.
- ↑ a b History of the post office Dottistraße capberlin.de (real estate exposé); accessed on January 28, 2014
- ↑ Dottistraße . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1937, part 4, p. 2141.
- ↑ Dottistraße 7 and 12-16 . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1941, part 4, p. 2243.
- ↑ Construction sketch Fernamt Dottistraße in the local history museum Lichtenberg
- ↑ Minutes of a site visit by the Monument Advisory Board, representatives of the district office and prospective buyers from 2009 ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF) accessed on January 29, 2014
- ^ View of the street front around 1930 , photo from the Landesbildstelle Berlin; accessed on January 29, 2014
- ↑ In the book Die Bau- und Kunstdenkmale ... there is the depiction that a group of putti and a tape with details of the construction date were present above the portal.
- ↑ Ceiling height and ceiling thickness according to verbal information from the client in January 2014
- ↑ Homepage archis Architects
- ^ Overall project Carrée Alte Post . capberlin.de (property synopsis); accessed on January 28, 2014.